Etyen Mahçupyan


Etyen Mahçupyan is a Turkish journalist, writer and columnist of Armenian descent. His most critical appointment was to serve as the senior adviser to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu in 2014-2015. He is one of the executive members of the founders' committee of the Future Party, in which he serves as the vice-chairman as of December 2019.

Early life

Childhood

Mahcupyan was born in 1950 in Istanbul as a son of a catholic Armenian-Turkish family. His upbringing was away from any kind of nationalism, neither Turkish nor Armenian, and rather involved more universal values such as being a good humanbeing with decent ethics and principles. His surname derives from his great-grandfather's nickname, "Mahcup", meaning shy, embarrassed, or reticent. He learned the Armenian language in elementary school; however Turkish was the main language spoken at his household.

Education

He graduated from Robert College, one of the most prestigious high schools of Turkey, in 1968. In 1972, he received his bachelor of science degree in Chemical Engineering from the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. Realizing that earning a living would entail working under a manager, he studied business management, and finance—to get ahead, professionally and intellectually. He completed his Master of Science degree at Business management in 1974 at Boğaziçi University. Then he received his second Master of Science degree in the area of international economics from the faculty of political sciences at Ankara University in 1977.

Career

As an academic, businessman and journalist

Mahcupyan's post-graduate studies at Faculty of Political Sciences at Ankara university were important for his intellectual trajectory. While he was at graduate school concentrating on international economics, he worked with Prof. Dr. Yahya Sezai Tezel as a research assistant in the Department of Economics at Ankara university during 1977-1980. Simultaneously, he also worked as a writer and an editor at the journal of "Toplumcu Düşün" with Tezel.
Following the coup of 1980,as an academic who experienced great disappointment and desperation in this period, Mahçupyan ceased his intellectual activities for some time and left academia moving into business. To support himself, he worked as a manager at several prestigious companies as well as his own business. After 1989, he started working for a consultancy firm, learning to work on “productivity-enhancing cultural and psychological change in companies.” Because of the kind of consultancy work he was doing, he studied social psychology.
In mid 90s, he transferred his own businesses to his partner and moved into journalism. During 1995-1996, he was briefly involved in New Democracy Movement that was established under the leadership of Cem Boyner. Between 1997-2000 he wrote as a columnist at Radikal newspaper and in 2000 at Yeni Binyıl newspaper. On 17 May 2001 he started writing at Zaman and stayed there until 2014. Upon assassination of his close friend Hrant Dink in 2007, he became the editor-in-chief of Agos, the Armenian community's weekly newspaper and stayed at that position until his leave in 2010. Between 2014 and 2016, he kept writing his columns in Akşam. and Daily Sabah Since 2016, he has been writing in Karar newspaper that is known to share political views in line with Ahmet Davutoglu.

As a senior advisor to former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu

In October 2014, Mahcupyan was appointed as the senior advisor to prime minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoglu. It was the first time in Modern Turkish history that a minority of Armenian descent was appointed to such a critical position and his appointment drew praise as a sign of Turkey's commitment to minority rights. He technically retired from this position in 9 March 2015. The announcement came a day after he openly acknowledged the Armenian Genocide. However he stated that his departure had nothing to do with the row. He said he retired in March due to the mandatory retirement age for civil servants, and has kept advising Davutoglu afterwards informally.
As a part of his senior advisory duty to former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, he busily traveled across the Europe and USA and met with academicians, journalists, politicians and bureaucrats for better communication purposes that would lead to solutions to the regional problems, in which Turkey clearly plays a crucial role. Since then, he has been sustaining the same mission by attending lectures, conferences, symposiums and governmental panels as an invited guest speaker. Among his recent talks are "Hrant Dink Memorial Peace and Justice Lecture: Minorities and Human Rights in Turkey" at Harvard University, Centre for Turkey Studies roundtable titled "Understanding the Transformation AK Party Era in Turkey"; and "New Turkey conference at Italian Parliament".

As a board member, director, founder at NGOs

He was a member of TESEV advisory board and also the director at TESEV until late 2014. Afterwards, he and his colleagues at TESEV resigned from their positions and all together established a new Non-governmental organization named PODEM. PODEM is a Public Policy and Democracy Studies foundation which describes itself as:

" The Center for Public Policy and Democracy Studies is an Istanbul-based independent think tank founded in February 2015. PODEM seeks to contribute to the efforts towards the creation of a Turkey where democracy is fully institutionalized, and where a democratic mindset, social peace and justice prevail. It further envisions a Turkey that is increasingly influential in the establishment of peace and justice on regional and global levels."

As a screenplay writer and TV host

Mahcupyan was the screenplay writer of the movies Pains of Autumn and Mrs. Salkım's Diamonds. and he also hosted several TV programs.

Other political activities

In 2019, Mahcupyan was one of the founders of Davutoglu's newly founded Future Party.

Publications

Columns about Cancer research

Due to his first wife's illness as well as his intellectual interest in medical sciences, he had researched intensely about medicine and in particular Immunotherapy as an alternative to Chemotherapy in 90s. Because of his several columns regarding such comparative critics in the treatment of cancer in late 90s and early 2000s, he had received tremendous backlash from the oncologists in Turkey. Significant scientific findings in the field of medicine over the years, however, proved Mahcupyan right since immunotherapy is anticipated to be the ultimate cure for cancer in near future, which may replace the chemotherapy in the long run.

Books